Cal's eyes flashed. “Get your hand off me.”
“Not yet.”
“Dom.” A warning.
“You think because we're in my space you'll just fall in line with whatever dynamic I'm trying to establish?” His voice had dropped to something quieter and more dangerous. “I don't need saving. And I sure as hell don't need you playing protector because it makes you feel less alone.”
“You're right. You don't need saving.” I crowded closer, using my size deliberately, and watched him hold his ground despite it. “But needing something and wanting it are different things. And you want this. You've wanted it since the alley.”
“I'm choosing not to complicate an already complicated situation.” The words were steady but his breathing had changed — heavier, his pupils blown wide despite every bit of composure he was fighting to hold. “This is a terrible idea.”
“You know what's a terrible idea? The two of us spending every conversation performing indifference while we're both thinking about the same thing.” I backed him toward the wall and watched him let me, watched him choose not to stop it even as he kept saying he would. “Stop pretending you don't feel this. Stop pretending every time I touch you your control doesn't fracture. Stop pretending you're not already halfway to where I want you.”
Cal's jaw went tight. His hands came up and fisted in my shirt, and I couldn't tell if he was about to shove me away or pull me closer, and from the look on his face neither could he.
“You're infuriating,” he said.
“You're impossible.” I leaned in close enough that our mouths almost touched. “We're well-matched. So what are we doing, Cal?”
“You call this dealing with it like adults? Pinning me to a wall and demanding I admit I want you?”
“Yes.” My hand moved to his throat, my thumb pressing against his racing pulse, feeling it betray everything his words were trying to deny. “And you're tired. Tired of control being the only thing holding you together. Tired of keeping everyone at the distance where they can't hurt you.”
“You don't know what I'm tired of.”
“Then tell me. Stop hiding behind the sarcasm and the deflection and tell me what you actually want.”
“I want you to stop looking at me like I matter. Like losing me would actually hurt you. Because it won't. People don't hurt for me. They move on.”
My grip on his throat tightened slightly. “Wrong.”
“Dom—”
“I'm not moving on. I'm standing here offering you something real and you're too scared to take it.”
“I'm not scared.”
“Then prove it.” I held his gaze, not moving, not backing off, letting the silence do the work. “Kiss me. Right now. Unless you're afraid you'll feel something you can't walk back from.”
Cal stared at me for three seconds. Then he grabbed my face and kissed me with the kind of force that left my lip stinging, our teeth colliding in a mess of need, beer, and bitterness. His mouth was heat and challenge. I matched him, teeth and tongue, demanding a response, and he gave it back, pulling my hair until my scalp burned, swallowing my groan like a victory.
When I pulled back, breathless, I let my hands fall to his chest, feeling the hammer of his heart under expensive fabric. I watched his eyes—gorgeous, dangerous, unblinking—and gave him a single command. “Strip. Down to your underwear.”
He held my gaze, never the type to break first. For a moment, I thought he’d push back, but then he started to undress, slow and deliberate. Jacket shrugged off, shirt unbuttoned and folded, baring skin that was all sinew and scars and the brutal poetry of a body that knew both violence and discipline. Trousers next, then socks, until he was left in black briefs that barely contained him. The firelight painted gold along his chest, catching on the ridges of muscle and the pale slash of an old scar near his hip.
I reached for him, my hands reverent on his skin. My thumbs traced the line of his collarbone, down the solid plane of his chest, over the V of his hips. I took my time, letting him feel my gaze, my attention, the hunger that was as much about respect as it was about wanting to mark every inch of him.
“You’re fucking beautiful,” I said, low and certain. “I hope you know that.”
He didn’t flinch. Just tilted his chin up, eyes hard with challenge. “If you want something, take it.”
I grinned, dragging my fingers down the centre of his abs, pausing just above the waistband of his pants. I felt him tense, refusing to give me the satisfaction of shivering, but his body was already betraying him.
I pressed my lips to his sternum, mouthing a slow path down his chest, tasting salt and heat and the faint spice of his cologne. My hands followed, worshipping him with touch, mapping the geography of his body like it was mine to own.
But this wasn’t about ownership. This was about choice. About showing him exactly what surrender could feel like in the hands of someone who respected his strength.
I stepped back, letting my eyes sweep over him one last time. Then I reached for the panel hidden in the wall beside the fireplace—a trick I’d installed years ago for nights when comfort wasn’t enough. I pressed the button, and with a soft hiss, the bookshelf beside us slid aside, revealing the doorway to the room I rarely let anyone see.
